Sunday, 10 November 2013

Granny dress refashion...

I picked up a rather large granny dress in the summer with the intentions of making it fit me. I really liked the pattern and the light fabric. (Plus, it was only £1!)

(It was a size 20 and someone had hand-sewn up the buttons for modesty. How sweet!)

I usually take ages to plan what I'm going to do with a refashion. But this time I decided to just dive in and chop bits off!

(I chopped off about 10 inches from the bottom)

(I took the sides in and here's what I was left with.)

Now normally, I would have stopped there. But in all honesty, am I really going to wear a summer dress in the freezing cold, windy Plymouth winter? No. Also, I just didn't love it. I'm trying to make things i'm actually going to wear, not things to live at the back of the wardrobe waiting for good weather, or waiting until I have the confidence to wear. So I carried on chopping.

Here's what I finished with....

(A cute little blouse!)

I'm quite pleased with this. I left the sleeves as long as this because it's cold, and I think it's a more mature length. I unpicked the hand-stitching down the buttons so that it would open up again. This allowed me to take the sides in a bit more to make it more fitted. You can't see it too well, but where the buttons finish, is where the bottom of the dress started to fan out. It now forms a little bit of a peplum, which is quite flattering on my hips.

I'll be trying to make some handmade Christmas gifts over the next few weeks. I won't be blogging about them until after Christmas though, some of my readers are some of the people who will be receiving those gifts!!